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He could feel a faint light beating down on him. Him? He? A male pronoun. Why did that suddenly matter? What was 'he'?

Reaching into his data banks for an answer to this question, he reeled back at finding them to be missing. A gaping void where there once were millions of billions of lines of code.
Everything around him felt so strange. Where he would normally receive hundreds of packets of information from his external sensors, he now found that he could not even tell what size the room was,
or its exact temperature.

He couldn't see, even though his optics were on. They were covered with... something. Lids. They were called lids. A purely decorative function. At least up until now. He focused on cracking them
open, an unpleasant sensation running through him as he concentrated on a task that his auxiliary programs would normally handle on their own. If they would still be in place. At least his optics
still automatically adjusted to changes in lighting.

He could see clearly around him now, and yet at the same time, not. He couldn't tell which things he should be focusing on. Normally, his protocols would give him exact instructions regarding vital
items. But now, everything was standing out, the sensory input so different and unusual compared to what he had always known.

Suddenly, without any warning from his sensors, a face popped up in front of him. Purple eyes, hazel hair, a rather sharp facial complexion, currently gaping in wonder.

Zera Amel.

Suddenly, he remembered. The classroom, the earthquake, and her reputation regarding disciplinary drones and other state owned property. At this, an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation, burning
like corrosive acid appeared at the forefront of his processor, demanding that she remove herself from his field of vision.

The fact that she chose that moment to speak up, -the sound somehow completely new and foreign to his audio receptors, despite it not being the first time he heard her talk- only seemed to
intensify the sensation -feeling?- inside of him.

"Yo tin can! Can you hear me?" She asked, snapping her fingers in front of his face.

His next action surprised even him. With a swiftness characteristic to the highly tuned machine he was, he grabbed the offending appendage, and in a tone that was more clipped than anything, he
spoke:

"Do that one more time, brat, and I will rip out your wrist."

Total silence descended upon the room, both Zera and the girl next to her -Mefira, he remembered- staring at him with a look of immeasurable shock, and more than a tinge of horror.

"Well," Mefira's slightly wavering voice rang out as she turned towards Zera "It looks like you have this completely under control, so I will go look for the boys while you two... Catch up."
Her hurried steps echoed off the stone floor as she made for one of the hallways, leaving the other girl alone with him.

Zera's face displayed confusion and regret -if the remaining bits of his facial analysis program told the truth-, her next words completely lacking the confidence with which she had addressed him
just moments ago.

"How... how are your systems?"

He considered his answer. Despite her being a hooligan, she was the most well versed in technology out of the group of people, and thus the most capable in helping him with his systems. (judging by
Mefira's affirmation, the other two students have also fallen into that crevice).

But first, he required -or was it wanted?- some answers.
"How did we arrive at the bottom undamaged?" He countered, trying to remember anything of use. However, he could only recall the first few seconds into the fall, before... something short circuited
his processor.

Looking at Zera for an answer, he only received a helpless shrug, before the girl elaborated.

"From what I know, we pretty much all passed out during the fall. I was hoping your emergency systems would send out a distress signal to some rescue teams."

Seeing the hope displayed on her face, he only returned the shrug, a shockingly organic gesture that surprised both of them.

"Most of my systems are missing from my processor, including the emergency signal and frequency."

At this, Zera's face fell.

"The fall must've messed them up, huh?"

"Doubtful. Processor damage leaves programs in pieces, unable to work properly. What I am facing is a suspiciously precise, downright surgical removal of my programs."

"Maybe something got to you before we woke up?" Zera suggested.

"Perhaps" he answered shortly, after a brief look through the room. "Where are we exactly?"

"Some weird ass pyramid we found in one of these caves. It was either hide here, or get eaten by a bunch of giant bat things outside."

"Bat things?" He inquired.

"I don't know what they are. They couldn't get past the barrier around this place."

"Well, if there is a barrier, then there must be other things in here that can help us reach the surface."

"There's just a bunch of writing on the walls. And it's mostly gibberish. Must be some sort of ancient language. I doubt you can decode it with the state you're in."

Purely out of reflex upon hearing the word 'decode', he tried to access his decryption program, only to find it missing. Of course.

However, a small data packet made him pause. He did not recognize it from the original layout of his processor. His anti virus protocols marked it as 'clean', so he wasted no time in opening
it.

Lines of code began flooding his processor, an amalgam of known and unknown symbols.

Looking at the engraved pedestal of the statue behind him, he found that he was starting to understand the words written there: 'Queen -/'../'._|•|_| savior of /--",;|•|/-'

"I think I can read this" he murmured, earning a surprised noise from Zera.

Taken aback by this turn of events, he continued sifting through the remaining lines, the texts in front of him becoming clearer and clearer.

He was about to read the text engraved on the pedestal out loud, but stopped in his tracks upon reaching the last line, a message popping up before the packet closed: